When the dust from the coup settled, Yeltsin was the victor. Gorbachev reaffirmed his belief in the Communist Party, but this was not what people wanted to hear. He was jeered in the Russian parliament and humiliated by Yeltsin -- who, without warning, forced his rival to read, on live television, documents showing that Gorbachev's Communist allies, members of his government, had been behind the coup. Russian viewers and U.S. diplomats knew he was finished. On August 24, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party and disbanded the Central Committee. But it was too late -- five days later, the Soviet Communist Party essentially dissolved itself.

As talks on the future of the Soviet Union continued, Gorbachev -- still the country's president -- was isolated. At Minsk on December 8, the three Slav states -- Russia, Belarus and Ukraine -- signed a pact ending the U.S.S.R. and creating instead the Commonwealth of Independent States. They called Bush before telling Gorbachev what they had done. Gorbachev, humiliated, denied their right to do it -- but within days the Russian parliament ratified the commonwealth agreement, and all but one of the other republics joined.

On December 25, Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev called Bush and told him it was his last day in office. That night, the red flag of the Soviet Union, with its gold hammer and sickle, was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin. In Washington, Bush made his Christmas address and announced to the world that the Cold War confrontation between the two superpowers -- which had dominated world affairs for 45 years -- was now over.